2026-01-29

95. Deputy Brendan Smith asked the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science the capital funding available to his Department for developments in the further education sector in 2026; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [6900/26]

I very much welcome the substantial provision the Minister secured in the national development plan for capital developments in the further education sector. Thankfully, there has been a welcome emphasis in recent years on the development of the further education sector. Will the Minister outline some of the projects that will be progressed and will benefit from the funding available to his Department in 2026 for capital developments?

As part of the national development plan review, which was conducted last summer, I secured for the Department a capital allocation of €4.55 billion over the next four years from 2026 to 2030. This is significant and it is almost double what it was previously. It is the largest budget in the history of the Department. It is aligned to the overall capital envelope of the NDP. Part of this is because the Department's activities are so aligned with the whole-of-government missions, such as infrastructure needs to roll out housing for our people, the metro, transit, grid upgrades and water upgrades. The Department will train the tradesmen to do these jobs through the apprenticeship paths and programmes. There are also all of the skills that go with the digital agenda. We are entering an AI age. There is also the energy revolution with offshore wind and all of the opportunities that come with this. There are also healthcare and therapy needs, and we are scaling up the provision of courses for nine different occupations. Additionally to this, the research and innovation aspect of the Department has received significant funding. Before Christmas I launched the €750 million INSPIRE research framework programme, which is fundamental to our knowledge economy, the ideas that we generate and how we succeed, innovate and remain competitive in a very robust and changing world. These are all significant capital projects. I was delighted to be able to secure these moneys and we have published the sectoral plan for the Department which provides a detailed breakdown. One project that might be of interest to Deputy Smith is the college of the future in Cavan. I thank him for the invitation to visit Cavan Institute recently. I still wear the top with pride; I was presented with a sporting jersey which I wear on my runs every week. The Cavan Institute is very much one of the projects I look forward to seeing progress in the time ahead. I might come back to it in a supplementary reply.

I thank the Minister for his response. With regard to Deputy Ward's concluding remarks, I very much welcome the fact that the Minister was the first Minister who was able to announce an all-Ireland university. He has worked very assiduously, along with Dundalk Institute of Technology and Queen's University, to have Dundalk Institute of Technology as a college of Queen's University. It is the first all-Ireland university we will have. This is practical and I very much welcome it. I very much welcomed, as did the board of management and the staff and students in Cavan Institute, the Minister's recent visit. As Councillor Clifford Kelly, the chairperson of the board, indicated that day, a number of us have worked over the years to develop the college. We have seen it grow from being an extra class at second level in Breifne College to being a substantial provider of further education. Today it is one of the largest colleges in the country. We need additional accommodation, as the Minister saw himself at first hand. I sincerely hope his officials, working with Cavan and Monaghan ETB and Cavan Institute, will be able to progress the particular college of the future to the next stage so we can advance towards construction.

To pick up on Deputy Smith's remarks about Queen's University and Dundalk Institute of Technology, I had a meeting on it as recently as yesterday. I am really excited about it. Going back to the wider question, I will do everything in the programme for Government to the best of my ability but I will do other things. The Queen's University and Dundalk Institute of Technology merger was not in the programme for Government but I am doing it anyway. It is something that is very important and I am very excited about it. The all-Ireland dimension is huge. Deputy Smith is a big supporter of the all-Ireland dimension, as is Deputy McGreehan. We were at a function yesterday in connection with it. It is progressing and it is a very important milestone. With regard to funding and capital for the Cavan area, with the relocation of the army barracks Cavan Institute received €5.3 million in funding in 2023. The centre of excellence for supply chain logistics was completed in September 2024 with €207,000. There is a minor capital works application in the pipeline at present for Cavan town. There are also electrical works, roof works and other ongoing and emergency works. The college of the future campus on the Cathedral Road is progressing and I am glad to be able to inform Deputy Smith and the House that I was successful in progressing it to the next stage of development. It is at pre-tender project design planning, procurement and supply stage and I very much hope to be in a position to update Deputy Smith and the House on further progress on it in the near future

I thank the Minister for his response and I know of his personal commitment to the project. As I assured him previously at the Oireachtas committee and at other meetings, when the project gets to tender stage it will be advanced as quickly as possible by Cavan and Monaghan ETB. We have an opportunity to work in conjunction with Monaghan Institute and South West College in Enniskillen. It is being practical, for which the Minister and I have advocated for many years. Thankfully, we are in a position today, with the political initiative since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, to have greater collaboration across different aspects of society. We have seen the all-Ireland economy grow. We now need to upskill our people, and to provide skills and training on an all-Ireland basis. Earlier today, the Oireachtas committee on further and higher education heard from representatives of IDA Ireland, Enterprise Ireland and Skillnet. They were talking about a skills shortages. Thankfully, today we are talking about skills shortages in Ireland because in the past, unfortunately, we did not have employment opportunities. There is a great opportunity to utilise the potential of the further education sector to contribute to training and upskilling people for very worthwhile employment.

There is a real skills shortage. It is a factor of success because we are at almost full employment in the economy. Recently my Department produced a labour force modelling report which looked at our construction skills needs. I am working closely with Minister of State, Deputy Harkin, on the development of that report. That showed we need to continue to grow our pool of skilled tradespeople from our craft trades right across the board - all the skills we need to build the big infrastructure projects we aspire to develop over the course of this term which are funded through the national development plan. For almost the first time we actually have funding. What we need is an intermesh between the labour force and the skills to deliver. There are a number of ways we can do that but primarily it is through skilling and training our people. Things like modern methods of construction can be embraced which, as well as being more productive, also bring the employment opportunities to a more regional level because there can be factories developing modern methods of construction in a regional, rural location which are then shipped off to a building site in the big town or the big city without the worker having to commute every day. It addresses the gender balance in the workforce and things like that as well because it permits women with caring responsibilities and people with disabilities to work on a site like that because they may not be able to travel to a traditional construction site. It is beneficial for many reasons and is something we will continue to progress.